“What does a surveyor do?” Spiel

Here's what I used at our local eighth-grade career fair for at least ten years:

"Surveyors create and use maps to help people make important decisions."

For the first few years, I foolishly asked the students what they think surveyors do. The most common response was roughly "they stand in the mall with a clipboard and ask questions." While the statement above is a bit simplistic, it really worked for eighth-graders. They like Google Earth, making maps sounds interesting, and using maps to help people puts it all into the big picture.

"Hey, Mister! What are you doing?"

"Measuring"

Hey Mr. What're you doing?

Surveying

What's that?

Measuring property lines using angles and distances.

Cool. Does it pay good?

Yep, most of the time.

How can I get into that?

Pay attention in school and plan on going to college.

Oh... never mind.

Real conversation.

I once gave a demonstration of surveying equipment to a group of Gifted And Talented Students at an elementary school. I passed around my plumb bob with the Gammon reel , pocket tape, and hand level and demonstrated the EDM. They always ask about the pay I was warned, so I gave them a best case scenario, which at that time would have been about a quarter million a year. That got their attention, but when I told them they would need to know math there was a collective groan from all of them.

I have tried to explain how boundary surveying is something that requires a rare combination of loving both history and math. You must enjoy math in all forms of land surveying, but, boundary surveying, done properly, will lead you to enjoy the history of the land, as well.

We have a nearby city that has nearly two hundred additions and subdivisions, but, there is no singular part of the city bearing the city name. It was formed from four individual, competing towns deciding to merge as a new name.

Massachusetts towns were often formed by splitting off portions of one or more larger towns to form new ones. Settlement usually started around one area, where a church would be built. As settlement and farm development expanded outward into the further reaches of the town, the distance to church increased to a point where the further-outs would petition the legislature to form a new town and build a new church to serve it.

That sounds similar to counties in PLSSia. Some of the original counties were huge areas. As settlement grew, portions of the huge county became separate counties. Illinois may be the best representation of that progession of county establishment.

I've been working near an elementary school recently and have had a couple kids ask me what I was doing. I usually try to explain that I'm making maps like pirates do to help people find buried treasure. That tends to fire their imaginations, and isn't completely untrue!

Many years ago I had a young fellow helping run the rod one day who had been involved with a lot of my drafting but this was his first day of helping in the field. My party chief at the time was shooting in a ton of data with a total station on a project detailing an active school property. Some of the elementary students headed to the playground area at recess time stopped to ask him what he was doing.

He reportedly told them, "We are figuring out the best way to blow up the school so you won't need to go to school anymore." They all wanted to help.

Somehow, that information never made it to anyone important as I never got a call.

I like that! (I'm going to steal it, too).

I once described development related surveying to engineering company business development types who had no idea what we did as:

"We create a digital model of the real world for engineers and architects to use as a base for their designs; then we take those digital designs and place then back in the real world to be constructed."

Run from one job to another in a big chaotic state of crisis and confusion.

Moe you're supposed to come up with a creative "humble brag," not tell the truth...

It is important to tailor your response to the audience. I like to tell construction superintendents that I bring order to his disorderly world.

I tell engineers and architects that the only thing they need to know about surveying is that they don't know how to do it and can't do their own jobs without it.